SUMMER COLONIES FOR CITY PEOPLE 265 



schoolhouses ; also, brief excursions into parks, and hanging 

 up before the class colored pictures of landscapes and rural 

 scenery. 



While in many cases, especially in large cities, the neces- 

 sity was recognized of getting the children out of the great 

 desert of brick and mortar into the open air and into com- 

 panionship with life in the field, the garden, the brooks, and 

 the woods, it had nowhere resulted in a systematic effort 

 to aid the children of an entire city in that way until it was 

 tried in Berlin. Of course it is well understood, not only 

 abroad, but in New York and in other large cities of this 

 country, that something must be done to alleviate the want 

 of space and fresh air, and so recreation piers and roof gar- 

 dens are provided, excursions of schools into parks are un- 

 dertaken, open-air playgrounds are instituted, and similar 

 efforts are made tending to mitigate the evil effects of city 

 life ; but all these efforts are merely sporadic or temporary ; 

 they do not attack the evil at the roots ; moreover they are 

 only drops in the bucket when compared with that which 

 is necessary. 



This tendency to cooperative and collective action has re- 

 sulted in this particular case in thousands of the children's 

 " Arbor Gardens " round about the city. It is an experience 

 "en gros," one of such dimensions that cavil ceases and ad- 

 miration rises supreme. 



The German poor are very poor indeed, but parents were 

 induced to rent, at a price of 4 marks ($1) or about 20 cents 

 a month from May to October for the summer season, a 

 patch of land in the suburbs of Berlin unfit for farmland 

 because cut up by railroad tracks and newly laid-out streets. 

 On one of these patches a family might erect an arbor, or a 

 small structure of boards with a wide veranda and a cor- 



